[
    {
        "id": 204248,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1961",
        "page_number": 16,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n13\n\nDuring the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this region became one of the most important regions for archaeological study by Russian, French, German, Japanese, Swedish, and British archaeologists. The great names for the English reader are those of Dr. Sven Hedin of Sweden, and Sir Aurel Stein. The geographical exploration of the one, and the archaeological exploration of the other provide reading material of the utmost fascination and charm, and offer a key to open the closed door of Central Asian studies.\n\nTo these must be added the scholarly work on Central Asian languages Sogdian, Karosthi, Persian, Turkish, Uighur, and Mongolian that illumined the work of the archaeologists, including the names of the two great French sinologues, Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, and of the Russian Central Asian historian, W. Barthold.\n\nThe greatest episode in the history of Central Asia was the outbreak of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The most extensive land empire that the world has seen stretched from Russia to Mongolia, and embraced also China, Annam, and Persia, and in its later developments the Moghul dominion in India.\n\nThe trade routes between East and West were once more opened, mediaeval travellers from Europe made their way to Mongolia and China, which they knew by the name of Cathay, and for the first time the West had detailed accounts of farther Asia. The book of Marco Polo is known to all, but not so widely known are the slightly earlier journeys and narratives of the Franciscan Friars, John of Pian Carpine, one to the court of Kuyuk Khan (1245-1247), and the other to the court of Mangu in Mongolia (1253-55). Yet these both present to the reader first-hand information of the Mongols, and of the Chinese, on matters overlooked by Marco Polo.\n\nII. The Persians were the first of the great Oriental Empires with which Europe was confronted. The main theme of the History of Herodotus was the invasion of the independent city-states of Greece by the King of Kings.\n\nIt was to understand how this situation came about, how and why the invasion failed, that Herodotus set out on his seventeen years' travels, collecting material—geographical, historical, sociological, and religious from all the peoples and tribes within his reach, to work into his great history.\n\nA hundred years later Alexander reversed the process and the Greeks invaded the East. In three great battles Syria, Egypt, and Persia fell, and the Macedonian army penetrated to the tributaries of the Indus.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204249,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1961",
        "page_number": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n14\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe retreat of the Macedonian army was followed by the complicated history of North-west India, the present Pakistan, in which invasion followed invasion, Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scyth, Ephthalite and Turk, and dynasty followed dynasty, of which that of the Guptas was one of the most illustrious.\n\nBut the impact of the Greeks, though it was eventually absorbed, lasted for a long time, and its effect is still to be seen in the abundance of Graeco-Buddhist sculpture unearthed in the ruins in the Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, reaching even to the confines of North-west China.\n\nTo the Greeks of Alexander and of his successors, we owe a large part of our early knowledge of Persia and of Northern India.\n\nWhen the power of Islam had spread through Western Asia, the Moslem Arabs and Turks became the intermediaries between East and West.\n\nThe Crusades were one, but not the only, answer of the West to the Moslems,\n\nThe way of St. Francis was another, But yet another was that of Raymond Lull, who, born as it were before his time, advocated the study of Moslem philosophy and the Moslem tongue as a preliminary for the preaching of the Gospel.\n\nMeantime Moslem learning in Latin translations, and even the Greek authors, translated into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin, reached the Western World.\n\nThe Mongol dominion became divided. The Mongol rulers of Persia, and the partly Turkish partly Mongol rulers west of the Pamirs became converted to Islam. The dominion of Timur arose, and the Moghuls of India followed.\n\nFirst-hand accounts in Persian and Arabic now became added to the study of the Mongol regime. I refer in particular to Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror (between 1252 and 1260), by one who had served as a high official under the Mongol conquerors.\n\nFrom henceforth Islam contributed to the philosophy, poetry and art of the Persians, and the study of Islamics formed part of the study of Persia.\n\nBefore leaving the subject of Persia one can only refer in passing to the mystic philosophy and poetry of Persia, the beauty of Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, and of Persian architecture.\n\nIII. Finally we come to the sea-route to India and China, and the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan.\n\nIn the course of his travels Herodotus had visited Egypt, where he had learned about the navigation of the Red Sea, and recorded that Phoenician sailors in the service of the king of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216509,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 268,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "220\n\nBuddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE.\n\nTucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and \"was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]